Essays on Scandinavian Literature | Page 7

is no lack of evidence that
the rose-colored tinge is vanishing even from the painter's spectacles;
and such uncompromising veracity as that of Millet and Courbet, which
the past generation despised, is now hailed with acclaim in such
masters as Bastien-Lepage, Dagnan-Bouveret, and the Scandinavians,
Kristian Krog and Anders Zorn.
Björnson is, however, temperamentally averse to that modern
naturalism which insists upon a minute fidelity to fact without
reference to artistic values. His large and spacious mind has a Southern
exposure, and has all "its windows thrown wide open to the sun." A
sturdy optimism, which is prone to believe good of all men, unless they
happen to be his political antagonists, inclines him to overlook what
does not fit into his own scheme of existence. And yet no one can say
that, as presentations of Norwegian peasant life, "Synnöve," "Arne,"
"The Bridal March," etc., are untrue, though, indeed, one could well
imagine pictures in very much sombrer colors which might lay a
valider claim to veracity. Kielland's "Laboring People," and Kristian
Elster's "A Walk to the Cross" and "Kjeld Horge," give the reverse of

the medal of which Björnson exhibits the obverse. These authors were
never in any way identified with "the people," and could not help being
struck with many of the rude and unbeautiful phases of rural existence;
while Björnson, who sprang directly from the peasantry, had the pride
and intelligence of kinship, and was not yet lifted far enough above the
life he depicted to have acquired the cultivated man's sense of
condescension and patronizing benevolence. He was but one generation
removed from the soil; and he looked with a strong natural sympathy
and affectionate predilection upon whatever reminded him of this
origin. If he had been a peasant, however, he could never have become
the wonderful chronicler that he is. It is the elevation, slight though it
be, which enables him to survey the fields in which his fathers toiled
and suffered. Or, to quote Mr. Rolfsen: "Björnson is the son of a
clergyman; he has never himself personally experienced the peasant's
daily toil and narrow parochial vision. He has felt the power of the
mountains over his mind, and been filled with longing, as a grand
emotion, but the contractedness of the spiritual horizon has not
tormented him. He has not to take that into account when he writes.
During the tedious school-days, his beautiful Romsdal valley lay
waiting for him, beckoning him home at every vacation--always
alluring and radiant, with an idyllic shimmer."
Hence, no doubt, his sunny poetic vision which unconsciously idealizes.
Just as in daily intercourse he displays a positive genius for drawing out
what is good in a man, and brushes away as of small account what does
not accord with his own conception of him, nay, in a measure, forces
him to be as he believes him to be, so every character in these early
tales seems to bask in the genial glow of his optimism. The farm
Solbakken (Sunny Hill) lies on a high elevation, where the sun shines
from its rise to its setting, and both Synnöve and her parents walk about
in this still and warm illumination. They are all good, estimable people,
and their gentle piety, without any tinge of fanaticism, invests them
with a quiet dignity. The sterner and hardier folk at Granliden (Pine
Glen) have a rugged honesty and straightforwardness which, in
connection with their pithy and laconic speech, makes them less genial,
but no less typically Norse. They have a distinct atmosphere and spinal
columns that keep them erect, organic, and significant. Even

reprehensible characters like Aslak and Nils Tailor (in "Arne") have a
certain claim upon our sympathy, the former as a helpless victim of
circumstance, the latter as a suppressed and perverted genius.
In the spring of 1860 Björnson went abroad and devoted three years to
foreign travel, spending the greater part of his time in Italy. From Rome
he sent home the historical drama "King Sverre" (1861), which is one
of his weakest productions. It is written in blank verse, with occasional
rhymes in the more impressive passages. Of dramatic interest in the
ordinary sense, there is but little. It is a series of more or less animated
scenes, from the period of the great civil war (1130-1240), connected
by the personality of Sverre. Under the mask, however, of mediæval
history, the author preaches a political sermon to his own
contemporaries. Sverre, as the champion of the common people against
the tribal aristocracy, and the wily Bishop Nicholas as the
representative of the latter become, as it were, permanent forces, which
have continued their battle to the present day. There can be no doubt
that Björnson, whose sympathies are strongly democratic, permitted the
debate between the two to become needlessly didactic,